Congratulations to Tommy Amaker and the Harvard Crimson, for pulling of the biggest upset of day one in the round of 64

Unfortunately things didn't work out well for Amaker in AA, but he is doing a bang up job in Cambridge Mass. Amaker lost two key players before the season started to academic scandal, but still managed to win the Ivy League, then beat a 3 seed in the NCAA Tourney without the benefit of scholarship athletes

The transformation of Amaker from a coach who could recruit somewhat well but couldn't seem to coach his guys up (as he appeared at Michigan), into a legtimately good bench coach (as he appears at Harvard), is astounding. I definitely did not see that coming.

a brain implant, or someone whacked him upside the empty head he had while he was here. Or it was some kind of mad Harvard scheme. Anyway, he was an idiot then and he's a genius now, that's pretty clear.

He was not an idiot; he did improve the program from where Ellerbe left it. But we couldn't take the next step and get into the tourney. Coaches aren't robots. Their ability to do their job changes over time. It may be that we hired him too early in his career and that Harvard's gotten a more finished product.

Maybe he's better at choosing his assistants now. Beilein inherited some of Amaker's assistants at first, and the results were underwhelming. Beilein then brought in Alexander and Jordan in the 2010 offseason and the program has taken a major step forward since. Perhaps Amaker has found his Alexander/Jordan.

I know New Mexico had a nice season, but I think they were overrated as a 3 seed anyway. Since I don't think NM was going to offer much resistance, I'm not sure this has too much impact on OSU's path. I expect OSU's foe in that round will be Arizona anyway.

In any event, when I watched, they seemed solid, athletic and well-coached. Harvard has no business upsetting them with their two best players out and basically no scholarship athletes. Its a notable upset. Might not be a typical 3. Again, still think OSU would have handled them.

Everyone I know at Iowa, which includes a significant number of people who work at the university, almost universally say that Alford was a terrible person to most people around them. His tenure is really when Iowa started to slide.

Amaker certainly had worse facilities to show recruits than Beilein does now, but he was able to recruit pretty well despite that. Recruiting wasn't really the problem during Amaker's tenure. Player development was a bigger issue.

100% pure, unadulterated flamebait. If this isn't flamebait, what exactly would qualify as classic flamebait?

I'm tempted to add the standard caveat, that it is another Rodriguez-hater, picking another fight in a thread where none existed. But I have no idea what you think about Rodriguez; I suspect that this was such low-level thread vandalism, that it was simply to provoke a reaction. So maybe "Trolling" would be better. That's all the thought I'm giving it.

You'd be right if you were talking about Cheryl Burnett. Don't think Michigan has ever had a coach in any sport that was both so monumentally unsuccessful and simultaneously hated by her players. Probably Martin's worst move by far.

this notion that fisher has no culpability because he wasn't the one who was handing out the checks is silly. to steal a quote: "i'm shocked. shocked! that there are players receiving additional benefits!"

i was on campus for grad school during the fab five era and lived in the same apt complex as webber. trust me, there were lots and lots of rumors that something was up...fisher chose not to see it and skated.

i was also on campus as an undergrad during the bill frieder era, and there were similar rumors...but those were different times.

I was not friends with the Fab Five but occassionally ran across them at parties and what not when I was an upper classmen and they were freshmen/sophs. The dudes were unemphatically not living large. They were bitching about being broke, but were generally goods guys that took full advantage of their all access pass on campus. So when Jalen was saying he needed pizza money, we wasn't joking. I still think Fisher is culpable and not proactive enough, but I wouldn't say it would be easy as a coach to see things and I would contend that its a bit risky to rely on cliche "athlete on the take" rumors swirling around campus. No one at the time was spotting any of these guys driving around campus, ala Lorenzo White (used to drive around campus in huge white brand new suv) or Terrel Pryor, in new sports cars they claimed to "own". Rather, they were at parties bumming beer and rides. Still hate what they did and the impact it had, but I hate Martin most.

You're totally missing the point. What Steve Fisher was guilty of is debatable. What he was fired for is not having his program under control. His program extended beyond the Fab Five. As someone else already noted, Chris Webber is the only one of the Fab Five that was found to have taken any money.

I'm in my early 40's, so I'm definitely old enough to remember. I just forgot about all of the guys that were involved.

It really bothers me too, that "The Fab Five" have this moniker as having been guilty for the things that Chris Webber did.

From everything that I've ever saw, heard, or read, the other four were good guys that played great and followed the rules. However, they're unfairly perceived (by some, not by all) as having been involved in this mess just because they were there.

Hopefully, if the Fab Five ever have the opportunity to be recognized by the university, that will change.

There's no concrete proof the coaches knew? Have you read the NCAA report?

Who do you think let Ed Martin through the door over and over again? Who forged Perry Watson's signature on ticket requests for Ed Martin? Who kept a seat on the bench warm for Ed Martin's best friend Perry Watson until his season was up at Southwestern?

I like the halo. The stadium obviously looks better now, but the halo reminds me of being little on my dads shoulders entering the stadium seeing the non-intimidating exterior opening up to what I thought was the largest place in the world. It was pretty cool.

Amaker has always seemed like a really good guy. He seems like a true professional.

I'm not sure I can join you on the "deserves an NCAA Tournament win more than any coach" bandwagon. I'm sure there are a lot of coaches that deserve a win.

I'm not sure I can agree with your opinion on his part in building what Michigan BBall is building towards. I really appreciate what he did for this team while he was here, but I'm not sure he did much more than keep the seat warm.

I don't think it was his fault. I think it was just a result of where the program was at that point. He just wasn't able to overcome those circumstances.

Good luck to him. However, I hope they lose to Arizona. I'd rather OSU plays Arizona in the sweet sixteen, not Harvard.

I am tremendously impressed with what Tommy has done at Harvard and it is great to see, but it's a big jump from turning around a mid-major to taking over the biggest job in college basketball from the guy they named the court after.

Hindsight, yeah Phillinova ended up champs that year, but in the moment it was the worst M Bball life of my fandom. Even worse than the title game loss to North Carolina. What a squandering of talent with Tarpley and his alcoholism

You may know better than me, but did he have drinking problems while he was at Michigan?

Maybe I misinterpreted your post, but I thought you were saying Tarpley squandered his talents at Michigan because of alcoholism. I was never sure that he had a drinking problem until he got into the NBA.

And to be fair or to add an interesting point, the point guard on that Villanova team came out with an article several years later saying that he played most of his games high on cocaine. I think there were just different standards of drug testing and acceptance of drug use among college athletes that came crashing down after the Len Bias thing.

I remember hearing he was caught with a 6 pack the night before the Villanova game or something like that. I don't have 100% recall on the incident. The other thing I've read, can't vouch for it, Tarpley was a bad influence on Eric Turner

Just a small point, Harvard does not give out athletic scholarships, but if your parents make less than $75,000 a year, you basically go for free no matter if you play sports or not. A few years back Congress threatened to tax these big endowment funds if they are not spent, so at HArvard, Yale, Princeton, if your folks dont make six figures, then you dont pay much tuition. You do still need the grades.

Yes, you do need "the" grades. But you don't need THE grades. Athletes at Ivy League schools are very smart, but it is unlikely that many of them would be granted admission if not for their althetic prowess.

I'm glad Amaker is doing so well at Harvard, but really, can we be surprised? It's pretty much a perfect fit when you compare it to his time at Michigan.

It's a program with no expectations, no history, no identity. It doesn't get a lot of media attention, which is perfect for a guy who had a total aversion to doing any kind of press in Ann Arbor. No in-state recruiting juggernaut to compete with. No gigantic state high school basketball scene to infiltrate. He's at a recruiting disadvantage with the academic standards, but it allows him to mold a program of high-quality, high-character guys in a way that just coudn't happen at Michigan.

I always felt like Amaker was a bit lost at Michigan. He didn't really get the big picture of what he needed to do to succeed, which wasn't made much better with the shitty hand he got dealt to start with.

It always drove me nuts to see Izzo at pretty much every big-time sporting event in Detroit, getting camera time and a mention about MSU basketball from the broadcasters, while Amaker stayed home. No radio shows, no TV appearances... A guy who was here for, what, six years, and you knew absolutely nothing about him. He just wanted to coach, not deal with all the BS a big-time school requires out of a coach, especially with MSU up the road.

Long story short, good for Tommy. Nice guy, decent coach. I'm glad it's working out so well for him, and quietly ecstatic Northwestern doesn't seem interested.

Agreed on the expectations and history, but I would say that being associated with the best brand name in academia gives Harvard a pretty strong identity. And I don't think Amaker is at as much of a recruiting disadvantage as you would think. His first recruiting class was ranked in the top 25. Like Harbaugh at Stanford, Amaker seems to have turned a perceived negative into a positive by zeroing in on kids who have both athletic and academic chops. Yeah, he won't recruit the same players that a Kansas or a Kentucky would recruit, but he might recruit an all-state point guard with a 4.0 who is also being recruited by Marquette or Xavier. And it might not be all that difficult to sell a kid like that on Harvard as the better option. Also, the oft-mentioned lack of athletic scholarships in the Ivy League is a misnomer. As someone pointed out above, if your parents make less than $75,000, you pay very little tuition. If you're also good enough to be a Division I basketball player, they find ways to make sure you pay nothing it all. Don't think the Ivy League is all that far above the fray.

By far. It's nice to see his teams play disciplined, fundamentally sound basketball, something that was never said about his Michigan teams. I do suspect that they arrive on campus with a lot of those qualities - I wonder if his Harvard players improve more over the course of their careers than his Michigan kids did. That was the biggest knock on Tommy's Michigan tenure - Horton and Harris were great freshmen, but didn't appear that much better as seniors. Sims had so much potential that was just never fulfulled. Amaker's players seemed to plateau soon after reaching Ann Arbor.

Amaker and Harvard simply exposed New Mexico for what they are: a decent team that had an inflated record because their entire league is divideded beween mediocre teams and tomato cans. New Mexico beat UNLV in the MWC tournament final. So, what happened next? UNM lost as a three seed and UNLV lost as a five seed.

This is a good win for TA, but to me, it's just more proof that the divide between the majors and mid-majors is reaching "chasm" status.